Do you believe in fairies?
by TheRealSnowWhite
Summary: Oneshot AU One Christmas Eve, Peter Petrelli reaffirms a young girl's belief in fairies, flying and the magic of Never Neverland. Xmas story


Christmas Eve 1996. Just outside Edinburgh.

He suddenly appeared into a dark landscape. It was stiflingly quiet; a foot of snow all around absorbed all sound and lit the night with an eerie blue glow. The shapes of several small buildings muffled by thick snowdrifts were just in front of him, seeming bunched around a large dome which shone in the moonlight.

"No!" He screamed and it broke the silence with an almost audible snap; it felt like several unseen birds had flown into the sky, cawing loudly. A dog barked loudly, aggressively but he didn't care. Let it come. He fell to his knees and thought he might die.

"Boy, why are you crying?" It was a small, soft voice and he looked up to find it.

A tiny girl was stood holding tightly onto the collar of a large, drooling German shepherd. She was almost doll-like; pale skin, large dark eyes and long, slightly curly brown hair. She was not dressed for the extreme weather, wearing a flimsy beaded dress and tiny beaded slippers. She looked at him with complete wonder and crunched her way through the snow over to him.

"You're not a boy. You're a man like Shawn. But why are you crying?" She now stood next to him, looking at him in gentle curiosity, as if it were usual for fully grown men to appear from nowhere.

"What's your name?" He asked her. He didn't know why, but he needed to find out where he was and who was here.

"Lucy Wendy Johnson." She replied with some satisfaction. "What's yours?"

"Peter."

She frowned a little at this. "That's a short name. Is that all?"

"Yes."

She looked at him a little more, turning her head this way and that, like a small bird contemplating something. "Is your last name Pan?"

"Excuse me?"

"I saw you fly. From over there." She pointed at a corner away from where they were stood; he now realised that in his anger he had accidentally flown over to the centre of the small buildings. On closer inspection, they were caravans snowed in and covered in brightly coloured posters. "The only Peter I've known that can fly is Peter Pan but Christina told me last year that he wasn't real but you can fly and your name IS Peter…" Her eyes were very bright and she gave a wide smile; he realised that she still had all her first teeth. It made her seem even tinier and more doll-like. "I know how to fly too but you can't tell anyone it's a secret!" She raised a finger to her lips and giggled. "Do you want me to tell you the secret?"

He smiled for the first time since landing in the silent snow land. "Sure."

"You have to promise and stick a pin in your eye not to tell!"

"I promise."

"Put your finger on your lips like this or I shan't tell you!"

He did as she asked and she looked around the deserted and hushed landscape.

"What Shawn and the others do and I do it too is we wear a harness under our costumes and then they pull us up on a thin wire that the people in the audience can't see and then we jump and swoop and it looks like we can fly!" She looked triumphant, as if she had thought up the idea by herself. "We're the Cirque de Volant, everyone flies!"

"Circus? This is a circus?"

She looked at him reproachfully, her large eyes scornful. "Yes, did you not see the posters? I'm on them," She added, raising her tiny frame proudly.

"You? What can you do?"

"Come and look!" She grabbed his hand and pulled at him. She laughed at him to get up quickly; she dragged him over to the nearest caravan window as he tried to brush the snow off him.

The poster was brightly coloured, yellow writing on a red background. CIRQUE DE VOLANT was printed in bold letters above a photo of a blonde woman apparently flying. Lucy tapped near the bottom and a rather large title read THE AMAZING ELASTIC GIRL! A photo of Lucy folded into a box accompanied it.

"I'm a contortionist." She folded her arms, her eyes bright with a mixture or pride and arrogance.

"Is that really you in that box?"

"Yes. It's two by one feet. I'm a very good contortionist; I can fire a bow and arrow with my feet when they're above my head and I'm in the air. I can use a Chinese pole and do tricks whilst hanging by my hair and ride a unicycle and I do a lot of trapeze tricks and wheel gymnastics. They say I'm hyper mobile. That means I'm really, really bendy. It's genetic. Like this."

She suddenly flipped backwards and then she was standing on her hands, feet resting on her own head. She exerted no effort and hadn't even lost her breath.

"I learnt this from my mum. Can you do this?"

"No."

"I've been able to do this since before I could walk. It's really easy for me." She spoke cockily but it wasn't nasty; she was so small and so sure of herself that it made her rather endearing. "I shall have to do this for my toy elf act on Boxing Day. It's when I pretend to be a toy then they put me in a little box that's wrapped like a present and then I jump out! It's my favourite act."

"Boxing day? Is it Christmas?"

"Yes. It's Christmas Eve; where have you been to not know that?"

"What year is it?"

"1996 of course." She gave a sneeze and shook her curls. She was still stood on her hands, which were turning mauve in the cold. The dog had wondered off in the opposite direction, long bored.

"Perhaps you should go inside before you get really cold."

"Why don't you come inside? I want to prove that you're real to Christina and Tupper! They laughed at me for believing in fairies-"

"Just stand up properly okay?"

She shot him a disapproving look but nevertheless flipped back onto her feet, rubbing her hands and placing them inside her armpits.

"Won't you come inside Peter? I could be a mother; you do so need a mother! It said so in the book and in the film! You need someone to do your spring cleaning for you and make you take your medicine." She grabbed one of his hands with her tiny, cold one. "Can I come with you? When you fly? It would be an awfully big adventure."

"Yes it is. But it isn't one you can come on."

"Okay…" She blinked her large eyes downward for a second, the corners of her mouth turning. However, she suddenly burst into a wide smile. "I shall give you a kiss if you like!"

"What?"

She held out her other hand and in the centre of her hand was a small blue bead that appeared to have come off her dress. "Do you want it?"

He held out his hand. "I would like it very much." He took it gently from her hand and put it in his trouser pocket. Lucy giggled and beamed widely.

"Lucy? Lucy? Where are you? Come in from the snow, you'll catch your death from cold!" The shadow of a woman suddenly appeared in a doorway that had been opened in the large snow dome that he presumed was the big top.

"Kelly!" Lucy ran up to the woman, leaving him behind. "Can I go spring cleaning?"

That was the last thing Peter heard before he vanished from this Christmas night, forwards in time, back to the cathedral in Montreal.

* * *

Lucy dragged Kelly, her adopted mother, back to the spot where she had seen him. He had vanished and while she was upset, she smiled. 

"There's no one here Luce. What are you talking about?"

"He was here; he flew here and now he's flown away. I wouldn't have got him to stay, he'd have to go back." She said it almost dreamily, holding loosely onto Kelly's hand and catching snowflakes in her outstretched hand.

"Go back where?"

"Neverland. Otherwise it won't wake up and the Lost Boys will have no captain. But I wished he could have taken him with me… I should like to see mermaids."

"Lucy, you been reading Peter Pan again?"

"No he was here! Look!" The little girl pointed out a hand over the small patch of snow where she had been standing.

Her own small foot prints were here and there, the paw prints of the dog and the prints of an adult man.

In one print, a single green leaf was trodden into the snow.

Kelly couldn't think of a single explanation for it . All the trees were bare; in fact, there were no trees around their camp. She turned to Lucy who gave her cocky look.

"You should really say that you believe in fairies Kelly."

* * *

**A/N: Just a little thing I rustled up because I saw the panto for Peter Pan and I have just re-read the book. Hey, it's my favourite all-time story and as I used to believe really strongly in Peter Pan (I used to have the window open in case he flew in and took me to Neverland lol) I thought 'What would happen if Peter from Heroes landed in front of a kid? And said his name was Peter? Wouldn't they just think he was actully Peter Pan??'**

**So yeah... The little girl is going to become a prominent character in another Heroes FF called The Others that I'm writing and I might change this to a two-shot when she sees her 'Peter Pan' when she goes to New York if anyone would like that.**

**So give me some love if you liked it!**

**(P.S. Loads of lines were ripped from the book Peter Pan. I didn't write them but I do love them.)**


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